Just a quick note to wrap up this series of articles. Since writing this article, I’ve switched out my main 
PC running Ubuntu to a Mac – running VMWare’s Fusion. So now I don’t have Quick Silver envy any longer as I’m using Quick Silver on a daily basis.
However, for the Windows side, I’ve decided to use Launchy. It’s very “Quick Silver”-like in operation after some tweaking. I’ve given up looking for a tool on the Linux side as I don’t use the GNOME interface very often any more.
Standardizing on one VM platform has made my life so much easier. I’ve played with a number of them 
and I’ve settled on VMWare. Currently, I have an Ubuntu Server running VMWare in my basement and I have a number of client machines that have VMWare client software running as well. Recently I’ve noticed a deficiency when I move my main computing platform to Mac OSX — there is no VMWare Server Console software.
This software is very valuable if you are running multiple VMs on a VMware server. Instead of configuring a remote control or SSH server on each client VM, you can control the VMs via the VMWare Server Console. When my main computing platform was Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon, this was a no-brainer. The software is bundled with the Linux client package. Running Gusty Gibbon on my primary PC was amazing because I could not only control another VMWare Server, the workstation had multiple client OS’s installed locally so I could have a dozen machines running on two physical pieces of hardware. But then I made the switch….
hint, hint, nudge, nudge – Mother’s day is just around the corner! Today is Apple’s last recommended day for express shipping of an iPhoto book. They even have a promo code to save you 10%. Although I got a notification in email from the Apple store, I’ll send you to Tuaw site for additional info.
Just a quick tip – I noticed lately that whenever I fire up a VM on my machine, ALL four processors would shoot up to 90+% utilization. In addition, the VM (typically running Vista) would take a good 10-15 minutes to load (okay, a bit of an exaggeration – but it took forever.) 
Took me a couple of minutes to figure out that it was my anti-virus software that was causing the issue.
As I mentioned before in a previous post, I’ve installed ClamXav software on my Macs because of the rising popularity of Macs (this begets challenges to hackers which begets to virus being written for OSX, etc. — or is that just my paranoia?) The program installs easily enough and updates itself regularly etc.
If you are using ClamXav Sentry and VMWare, you MUST exclude any VM images from being scanned! Better yet, make sure that you configure your ClamXav Sentry to ignore scanning the directory in which you keep your VM images. This will dramatically increase the start time of any VM. If you opt for the extension method of exclusion, VMs have an extension of .vmwarevm .
-JT
If you are like me, you probably spend a ton of money every year on 3rd technical 
publications/reference manuals. I’ve spent many years as a software consultant and had to keep on top of the latest and greatest technologies and methodologies. I easily spent hundreds of dollars every month on books and reference manuals. Considering that each book cost $40-$60 – it’s easy to spend thousands per year. This is even with access to the Internet and Google.
The costs of the books are easily justified when you look at your account receivables or you took that next step on the corporate ladder. Some of these books are worth their weight in GOLD. Of course, they also feel that way when you are lugging them around on your daily commute, or when your wife/girlfriend/significant other complains that the bookshelves are bowing because of the number of the books and it’s time to have a garage sale. Oh yeah.. now you have to deal with who’s going to buy that Foxpro for Dummies book now?
O’Reilly’s Safari Online service to the rescue. I’ve been using this service for at least two years and it has COMPLETELY replace all my reference book purchases.